my new year's thought

"In my fight with depression, lust, pride, and boredom I have found that the biggest challenger is often within me. The very machinery that I loathe and have fought so hard to defeat stares back at me from the mirror. This mechanism is always ticking. And in my spiritual life I have found that this is a part of me that has to die everyday if I am to be truly alive."

I was in such a crap-ass mood yesterday...but reading the song meanings to "Oh Gravity!" helped me gain some perspective.

I am so broken...like a thorn in the flesh, there are some demons that will haunt me for the rest of my life. There are emotions that I can't escape, lessons that must be learned, and pain that must be endured. I've come to realize that this brokenness will not go away...and I had a thought today that this sense of being inadequate and incomplete; that is all part of living this life on earth. I am temporal and finite as this world is - dark and dim - in need of the love of Christ to come through. such as the above quote reads: my biggest challenger is within me - I am my own worst enemy.

I so often see myself as being deserving of "the good life" - of pleasure, joy, contentment - but maybe, "the hard life" is actually what's meant for me. I am a selfish creature and what I desire as "the good life" is too much for my own good. I'm learning to embrace suffering as the road ahead: after all, I still live within the tension between the birth of christ and His second coming. If God's work is yet to be complete...how am I to expect that I can be complete? Jon Foreman also said something to this extent: we all start off with broken hearts, broken dreams, and bleeding parts - but the future is yet unwritten. He brings up Jacob (later Israel) once again and discusses the idea of continuously wrestling with God...which leaves us with a limp....a limp, like Paul's thorn, can teach us that God is ever present and ever in control.

And so, in this new year...I resolve to challenge myself to new heights and learn to recognize the darkness within me and fight it. I will not be afraid of pain and loss and I will come to terms with my incompletion because this world is yet incomplete. To be broken is the perfect state to be in - because it shows just how much I need God's grace. I too, need to die every day in order for God to reign in my life. World, feel free to fall apart - I am no longer frightened because the love of God will keep me strong.

"When everything in your life falls apart, you begin to realize what's worth holding on to and who's got a hold on you. Let the world fall apart ... all of my life rests upon the love that created every breath I have been given."